![]() The yellow box on this picture shows 80 square miles relative to Puerto Rico. Allowing 5 acres per nominal MW, this would occupy almost 80 square miles of land. The Powerwall, which was first introduced in April 2015, is a battery designed for homes that store the energy generated by solar panels. AES has mentioned building 10,000MW nominal, 2,500MW effective of solar in Puerto Rico. As soon as the storm passed, Tesla began sending hundreds of its Powerwall battery systems that can be paired with solar panels to the devastated island in an effort to restore electric power there. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm in late September, causing widespread damage and knocking out electrical power to the entire island of 3.5 million residents. Tesla is already involved in Puerto Rico’s recovery. Now they have a chance to rebuild it to something better and greener.Tesla and other companies specializing in solar and batteries may end up being the cornerstone to those plans, reported Bloomberg, which interviewed a key Puerto Rican official.ĭepartment of Economic Development and Commerce Secretary Manuel Laboy told Bloomberg the government officials are evaluating different options that focus on microgrids and regional grids that use solar and energy storage as well as other renewable sources.Īs of Monday, 23% of the island’s power has been restored. The electric grid in Puerto Rico was unreliable before the hurricane. According to Inside Climate News, a draft of the integrated resource plan should be released by the end of the month. Workers from Tesla, billionaire Elon Musk’s electric car and solar energy giant, arrived on Vieques just weeks after hurricanes Irma and Mara crippled the aging electrical grid and severed the. He and Elon musk connected on Twitter directly about rebuilding the electrical grid with independent solar and battery systems.Įven if the legislation does not pass, PREPA is working on its own plan that has a greater emphasis on renewables. Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, has expressed his support of the proposal. The storm “created broad consensus across the political spectrum,” Rua-Jovet told FastCompany. The system worked, and this helped boost the support for microgrids and renewable energy. “People were hurled back from the first world to the third world in terms of energy,” he said.Īfter the hurricane, solar companies like SunRun, Sonnen, and Tesla installed small microgrids (solar panels and batteries) at hospitals and fire stations where electrical power was essential. Rua-Jovet lives in San Juan and now works as director of public policy in Puerto Rico for SunRun, a solar power company that entered the market there this year because of the demand for solar power and battery storage systems. “It changed everything,” Javier Rua-Jovet told FastCompany. Prior to Maria, Puerto Rico had one of the largest public power authorities in the U.S., known as PREPA, serving a population of 3.4 million people from 31 power plants, 293 substations and 32,000. The island has abundant sunshine and wind, so the shift to these renewables is very compelling. Importing fuel to Puerto Rico is expensive, and the cost of electricity is twice as much as on the mainland. The state-owned electrical grid was unreliable and prone to power failures, and PREPA declared bankruptcy in 2017 even before Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck the island. Solar Energy How have Puerto Ricos new microgrids performed during its massive power outage Virginia Proposes Solar and Batteries for Vulnerable Communities. A request to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for $100 million to go to solar power is still pending.Įven before the storm, there were clear arguments for renewables. Puerto Rico hopes that some disaster funding may help homeowners buy solar panels. The new bill also supports people who can install their own solar panels and sell excess power to the grid. The territory currently provides 62 percent of its electricity by burning coal and oil according to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), and only four percent is from renewables. The proposed legislation calls for ending coal power generation by 2028 and requires all oil-fired power plants to convert to dual-fuel capacity within five years. As Puerto Rico rebuilds from Hurricane Maria, an ambitious clean energy bill was passed by the Senate (it still must be voted on by the House) that will shift the island to 100 percent renewable energy.
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